Hi, and uh welcome to my YouTube channel the History Squad, I'm here in the center of England,
my home county of Warwickshire with the Oxford Household the re-enactment household for the
Wars of the Roses. I've got Steve Arnold and I’ve got my son Josh who've been helping me, but I’m on
my own at the moment because I’m going to show you Steve’s pavilion, his tent that he takes
when he's on his re-enactment campaign, and it's very roomy yeah, very roomy indeed. This is um
quite something really it would be I say a status person a really you know high-ranking man at arms.
Got a nice, what I would call road kill, but essentially a boar skin yeah, with the boar head
but you've got to laugh at what's at the front door. Here this, it's a piss pot for a man.
This is a piss pot for a woman because it fits perfectly for
a woman. So let's go inside have a look.
Right, you can see how these are all put together, they're quite substantial and they can really take
a storm I can tell you. I’ve been in one. Here we have a double bed. Now this one is on slats,
some of them were on rope and the rope they tightened it
so as to make it secure. So the palliasse, the mattress sat on it, the straw mattress.
And that's where we get the old saying in England, they say sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite,
and that's they've been tightened up so it doesn't sag and of course the beg bugs, whoa.
What we have here is a collection of cooking knives. All that you need for working in the
kitchen, cutting up your vegetables but they are valuable so they are kept in their own leather
case. This is one of the kind of things that a soldier, a common soldier might take as booty,
plunder because he could either take it home, present it to mommy,
or he could sell it at a pro, at a profit. You have horn spoons here as well as a pewter spoon
and a very fine set of eating utensils. A fine eating knife, a pricker
and a matching spoon, how lovely is that. Get him out look at that how lovely.
So spoon back in there, knife in, once again something a soldier would value.
And the chest that they keep so many things in.
Over here different cups and there's an interesting thing here that I’ve learned
from Jim the Pot, Trinity Potteries. This has been double fired and it's heavy
yeah, compared to this cup which is glazed. This is really heavy and it's to do with tax. If you
were exporting pottery you'd be taxed, but because these were heavy they could be put at the bottom
of the ship and used as ballast, you didn't pay tax on ballast. Just a little interesting thing,
heavier the pottery, put it down below used as ballast. Wooden plates.
Oh now any children watching hide their eyes. This is for sauce.
Now have you ever wondered where we got the word saucy? There you go, enough said. Now people talk
about these all the time yeah, square, square meal in the navy. We don't know what that's, for
people say it's for salt. We don't know for sure. Right now we have jugs, this one is a very high
status piece decorated and glazed this, very very special, and uh above my head somewhere candles.
This is how they're made they're made in pairs so they can be dipped. These are wax candles,
very expensive. Something that kind of gets my goat is in the films you see hundreds of
candles burning away. No, incredibly expensive and the candles were like this right wax candles.
And on top of this chest you have glassware. Your common soldier would never see this,
he would never experience holding such a beautiful thing.
For a fine wine perhaps.
The way the glass goes around, it's wound around this. I’ve actually never handled
any of these and they are quite beautiful and the chests that all of these on are all carved.
Here we have um George and the dragon that kind of thing, we have saints, we have Mary Magdalene
over there, and because he's the boss, he's an important man at arms he's got an important chair
which I’ve never sat in before. This chair's really comfortable, I like this.
I can imagine myself pontificating over others, yeah who'd listen to me? Now,
two interesting things I’ve got a chafing dish here and it's been repaired exactly how they
used to repair broken pottery. Chafing dish you put hot coals in there, put it inside your tent
and it will give you a little bit of heat without having a naked fire in here.
Now, here we go have a look at this. Did they have spectacles way back then?
Yes they did yeah, especially if you're a monk
and you're in the scriptorium, especially if you're a doctor and you needed to magnify.
Most men at arms wouldn't need these because they couldn't read or write
they paid somebody else to do it for them. Well isn't this great?
Well I hope you've enjoyed our video showing you the inside of the tent and the
property of a good man at arms. If you did, do us a favor, like, share and subscribe.
If you're already a subscriber hey thanks a bunch and keep the comments coming because we do
really enjoy going through them. And a special shout out to two of our patreon members
we have Patrick Mourin and Chase Dixon. So thank you very much for your time. Bye for now.